Building a Park, Building Community, Building Skills for Lifelong Learning

You don’t aways know which choices you make and actions you take will “pay off.”

In my experience, there are a few that are absolutely sure bets, no regrets choices.

And they are volunteering with friends, neighbors, and other community members to create spaces to welcome everyone in the community to come together to play, to learn, to celebrate, and to work on accomplishing goals that serve needs greater than your own.

To do hard things together for the greater good, things that lasts beyond your use date.

Building a community park is one way to build community while building skills for lifelong learning and modeling for our children the value of engagement, giving back, and physically contributing to future generations.

I didn’t realize how lucky we were when our newly adopted town began a community build park project almost 30 years ago. I was totally excited about engaging the children’s imaginations and the community in designing and building the park, but as an overwhelmed new teacher I was not thrilled about adding evening volunteer hours to my already crazy day.

“We don’t even have kids yet,” I thought. “Can’t just donate money and let someone else do the heavy lifting this time around?”

Thank goodness my tired and cranky excuse making self did NOT win out.

My hubby and I talked about all the reasons why we – well he had already signed up, I should help too – for the good of the community – and why it would be good for us. We were planning to have kids, we wanted to get to know more young families, we wanted this town we’d chosen to be the best it could be.

And we did, and it was good.

It was exciting to be a part of building something big, and real, that you could touch and see everyday.

Since I lack building skills, I took shifts in the food service area. I helped while chatting and meeting new people. The organizers had done all the hard prep work giving me the opportunity to just show up and help with no stress on my part. Now I understand what a gift that was!

And now, 30 years later, another gift!

A group of young moms, not me, took on the responsibility of not only saving this treasure of a park which had exceeded it’s lifespan but also giving new generations and all of us in the community the gift of participation.

There’s been more than a year’s worth of planning, fundraising, and preparation.

Are you within driving distance of Winters and want to help?

Other ideas for participating in building? It doesn’t have to be a park. You can look for opportunities with Habitat for Humanity, volunteering with reconstruction and clean up after storm events, or create a project that your community needs.